Automate Your Network/

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Information Gathering: Continued

Information Gathering: Continued

Learn to output ios_facts about the devices to a JSON file using Ansible playbooks.

We'll cover the following...

Explanation of the ios_facts.yml playbook

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---
- hosts: CAMPUS
  tasks:
    - name: IOS Facts on CAMPUS
      register: ios_facts_output
      ios_facts:
        provider: "{{ ioscli }}"
    - copy:
        content="{{ ios_facts_output | to_nice_json }}"
        dest="./results/{{ inventory_hostname }}_ios_facts_output.json"

First, specify the scope of the play (hosts) and specify the tasks.

The task name is IOS Facts on CAMPUS, which will display during runtime. Register the output to the variable named ios_facts_output. The provider (credentials) can be found in the variable {{ ioscli }}.

Copy (copy) the content (content) of the variable ios_facts_output and apply the filter (|) to_nice_json to the output. Send this output (dest) to a file called {{ inventory_hostname }}, a variable that will be replaced at run time with each device hostname. Finally, append and create the file with _ios_facts_output as a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file in the JSON format.

Review the check mode output from the playbook that executes against all hosts listed in the [CAMPUS] group (referencing hosts).

The task [IOS Facts on CAMPUS] is executed, serially, against the hosts. This task has run successfully (for example, ok: [Core]) on each host. Confirm that there are no errors present in the playbook and the commands executed successfully.

Next, the task [copy] executes on each host creating (for example, changed: [CORE]) new output files for each host.

The play recap shows the status of each device (ok=2), how many changes will be made (changed=1 ...